Close Menu
  • Login
  • Support Us
  • Newsletter
  • News
  • Features
  • Interviews
  • Reviews
    • Video Games
      • Previews
      • PC
      • PS5
      • Xbox Series X/S
      • Nintendo Switch
      • Xbox One
      • PS4
      • Tabletop
    • Film
    • TV
    • Anime
    • Comics
      • BOOM! Studios
      • Dark Horse Comics
      • DC Comics
      • IDW Publishing
      • Image Comics
      • Indie Comics
      • Marvel Comics
      • Oni-Lion Forge
      • Valiant Comics
      • Vault Comics
  • Podcast
  • More
    • Event Coverage
    • BWT Recommends
    • RSS Feeds
Facebook X (Twitter) Instagram
Support Us
But Why Tho?
RSS Facebook X (Twitter) YouTube
Trending:
  • Features
    Battlefield 6 Classes - Support trailer image

    Battlefield 6 Really Wants You To Play Support (But Knows You Won’t)

    07/31/2025
    Battlefield 6 Multiplayer Reveal promotional image

    Battlefield 6 Classes, Maps, And More: Everything You Need To Know

    07/31/2025
    A glimpse at all the upcoming Star Wars stories coming to the galaxy

    Star Wars Stories: What We Learned At SDCC 2025

    07/25/2025
    Blindspot episode still

    It’s been 5 years since ‘Blindspot’ ended. Why haven’t you watched it yet?

    07/24/2025
    Strange Scaffold

    Strange Scaffold Summer Showcase Delivers Bizarre And Brilliant Games

    07/22/2025
  • Fantasia Festival
  • K-Dramas
  • Netflix
  • Switch 2 Games
But Why Tho?
Home » Film » REVIEW: ‘Make Me Believe’ Was Fine Until It Made One Dumb Mistake

REVIEW: ‘Make Me Believe’ Was Fine Until It Made One Dumb Mistake

Jason FlattBy Jason Flatt06/24/20234 Mins Read
Make Me Believe — But Why Tho
Share
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Reddit WhatsApp Email

Make Me Believe — But Why Tho

Make Me Believe is a Turkish-language Netflix Original romance written by Selen Bagci and directed by Evren Karabiyik Günaydin and Murat Saraçoglu where two grandmothers conspire to get their adult grandchildren together. It’s not especially interesting in the first place when the grandparents aren’t on screen, which is most of the movie, but by the time it nears its end, it makes one terribly dumb mistake that completely ruined anything I’d previously tolerated about the movie.

Get BWT in your inbox!

Subscribe to our weekly newsletter and get the latest and greated in entertainment coverage.
Click Here

Get BWT in your inbox!

Subscribe to our weekly newsletter and get the latest and greated in entertainment coverage.
Click Here

On the whole, it’s a classic kind of romance movie: pretty people and pretty scenery with no real character development to speak of. The dialogue is mediocre, the scenes are over-acted, and the horn-heavy romantic score feels dissonant from the Meddeteranian scenery filling your eyes from one scene to the next. There’s not a substantial spark between the main characters, but they’re both hot enough that you can watch it in the background without feeling like you’re wasting time necessarily.

The side-plot of the whole movie is that Sahra (Ayça Aysin Turan) is working for a magazine and is trying to find out the identity of a renowned photographer who has turned down some prestigious award. She finds out that Deniz (Ekin Koç), her childhood crush/enemy who her grandmother is trying to set her up with, is in fact that photographer. So Sahra plots to get him to do an interview with her even though he always refuses to do them. Of course, instead, they fall in love.

Make Me Believe is mostly an innocuous experience except for two areas. I can’t get myself to enjoy Deniz. He is just so clearly designed as a perfect man who does literally nothing wrong, is always kind and helpful, and upon his every word proves his virtuous and saintly nature. In an enemies-to-lovers story, I kind of want to have some animosity toward the love interest. But any potential friction is thrown away early on as the truth behind the couple’s falling out is revealed and it has literally nothing to do with their personalities in the end so much as a random and unrelated incident.

Which is why when the final moment of conflict finally arrives with 15 minutes to spare, it’s just so bad. It’s built entirely off of a moment of immature and uncharacteristically bad communication that was just proven a single scene earlier as outside of Sahra’s normal behavior. It makes you hate Sahra and feel terrible for Deniz in a way that I’m not sure this type of miscommunication or enemies-to-lovers approach could possibly succeed off of. I wasn’t left wondering if they would make up. I was just left wondering if Deniz would be wise enough to just walk away because I could never imagine a perfect person like Deniz tolerating such a brazen lie and painfully-scripted attempt to cover it up when just telling the truth was an option the whole time.

The “other man” who comes in to home wreck the moment that prompts the lie is barely even in the movie prior. It feels totally superfluous and like an ill-conceived moment of conflict just for the sake of conflict that betrays the small amount of growth and character we’ve come to see in the rest of the movie prior.

I didn’t love Make Me Believe from the start, it was just fine as a romance with only so much plot laced in some trauma and adorned by pretty people and places. But its last-minute wrench was not only terribly conceived and terribly written, it also basically destroyed any character growth or consistency the movie had built. It made Sahra look like the good guy after being completely wrong and left Deniz no longer the paragon of perfection that he seemed like the whole rest of the way, all because he’d fallen in love with her. It’s sloppy, it’s disinteresting, and it all could have been avoided if they didn’t feel the need to throw the most over-used trope in the book in at the last second.

Make Me Believe is streaming now on Netflix.

Make Me Believe
  • 4.5/10
    Rating - 4.5/10
4.5/10

TL;DR

I didn’t love Make Me Believe from the start, it was just fine as a romance with only so much plot laced in some trauma and adorned by pretty people and places. But its last-minute wrench was not only terribly conceived and terribly written, it also basically destroyed any character growth or consistency the movie had built.

Share. Facebook Twitter Pinterest LinkedIn WhatsApp Reddit Email
Previous ArticleREVIEW: ‘Mashle: Magic And Muscles’ Episode 11 — “Mash Burnedead And The Survival of the Fittest”
Next Article REVIEW: ‘Let’s Get Divorced’ Looks At The Complexities Of Love.
Jason Flatt
  • X (Twitter)

Jason is the Sr. Editor at But Why Tho? and producer of the But Why Tho? Podcast. He's usually writing about foreign films, Jewish media, and summer camp.

Related Posts

Simon in An Honest Life But Why Tho
3.5

REVIEW: ‘An Honest Life’ Is Terribly Dishonest About Its Own Politics

08/02/2025
Brandon Routh and co in Ick
9.0

REVIEW: ‘Ick’ Is A Near Perfect Horror-Comedy

07/29/2025
Bad Bunny and Adam Sandler in Happy Gilmore 2
5.0

REVIEW: ‘Happy Gilmore 2’ Earns More Shrugs Than Laughs

07/29/2025
Hi-Five
6.5

FANTASIA 2025: ‘Hi-Five’ Introduces A Scrappy, Superpowered Team Up

07/28/2025
Still from Haunted Mountains The Yellow Taboo
5.5

FANTASIA 2025: ‘Haunted Mountains: The Yellow Taboo’ Gets A Little Lost In The Weeds

07/26/2025
Dakota Gorman in HELLCAT
6.5

FANTASIA 2025: ‘HELLCAT’ Runs High In Tension But Loses Steam

07/25/2025

Get BWT in your inbox!

Subscribe to our weekly newsletter and get the latest and greated in entertainment coverage.
Click Here
TRENDING POSTS
Wildgate promotional key art
9.0
PC

REVIEW: ‘Wildgate’ Is Co-Op Space Mayhem Done Right

By Adrian Ruiz07/25/2025Updated:07/30/2025

Built for friends and tuned for competition, Wildgate is messy in the best way: smart, surprising, and bursting with room to grow.

Glass Heart
7.0
TV

REVIEW: ‘Glass Heart’ Offers Messy, Musical Catharsis

By Allyson Johnson07/22/2025

The musical drama series ‘Glass Heart’ soars when it focuses on the epic performances of it’s fictional band, TENBLANK.

Simon in An Honest Life But Why Tho
3.5
Film

REVIEW: ‘An Honest Life’ Is Terribly Dishonest About Its Own Politics

By Jason Flatt08/02/2025

An Honest Life is an overly severe misfire about a law student who falls in with anarchist burglars that can’t decide who it resents more.

World of Warcraft The War Within Ghosts of Karesh But Why Tho Interviews

‘The War Within’ Patch 11.2 Addresses Raid Trash, Magic-Focused Comps, And More

By Mick Abrahamson07/31/2025Updated:07/31/2025

WoW Sr. Producer and Asst. Lead Quest Designer address The War Within 11.2’s Manaforge Omega, Reshii Wrap rewards, and Mythic+ balancing.

But Why Tho?
Facebook X (Twitter) Instagram Pinterest RSS YouTube Twitch
  • CONTACT US
  • ABOUT US
  • PRIVACY POLICY
  • SUBSCRIBE TO OUR NEWSLETTER
  • Review Score Guide
Sometimes we include links to online retail stores. If you click on one and make a purchase we may receive a small contribution.
Written Content is Copyright © 2025 But Why Tho? A Geek Community

Type above and press Enter to search. Press Esc to cancel.

But Why Tho Logo

Support Us!

We're able to keep making content thanks to readers like YOU!
Support independent media today with
Click Here